Southern Baptist Convention Calls for Boycott of Disney

By ALLEN R. MYERSON

Published: June 19, 1997

DALLAS, June 18—
The Southern Baptist Convention called for a boycott of the Walt Disney Company today to protest that the creators of Mickey Mouse and an animated Snow White have gone astray, profiting from a liberated Ellen and offering health benefits to employees' homosexual partners.

Reinforcing an initially proposed boycott of only the company's theme parks and stores, the 12,000 delegates here voted to shun the entire Disney empire, including movie studios, cable television channels, book publishers, trade magazines, newspapers, television and radio stations and the ABC network.

Gay rights groups called the measure an attack on homosexuals that would fail, while Disney said only that the company was dedicated to providing family entertainment.

Southern Baptist leaders at their annual convention here pointed to their numbers, with their 15.7 million members forming the nation's largest Protestant denomination. They said they had focused on Disney because it had moved away from the wholesome entertainment it once, under its founder, provided.

''When Disney crosses to the other side of the street, there's a sense of betrayal and outrage,'' said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist morals and ethics panel, which has monitored Disney since the convention issued a warning last year. ''You can't walk the family side of the street and the gay side of the street in the Magic Kingdom at the same time.''

Disney, one of the largest communications companies, is only one of many corporations providing benefits to gay partners. But Baptist leaders also pointed to violence in Disney movies like ''Pulp Fiction'' and sex on its screens large and small.

ABC's brassy staging earlier this year of Ellen DeGeneres's coming out as a lesbian while her ''Ellen'' sitcom character came out as well rallied gay groups but further provoked the Southern Baptists.

Mr. Land said Disney and his organization had had little direct contact. ''On good days they ignored us,'' he said. ''On bad days they contemptuously gave us the back of their hand.''

The Southern Baptists are growing rapidly outside their home region, diversifying to include black and Hispanic congregations, but individual congregations are not required to follow the convention's lead.

Even as the communications giants, concentrated on the coasts in the nation's largest cities, have become more accommodating to gay issues, the Southern Baptists have affirmed their convictions about homosexuality.

''We believe homosexuality is a choice and that it's a bad choice,'' Tom Elliff, the Southern Baptist Convention president and pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church of Del City, Okla., said in an interview. ''But as with all bad choices, there's hope and help in Christ.''

Mr. Land said the impetus for the boycott came from Florida, where the values of Hollywood and mid-America collide. Disney World ''Gay Days'' organized by homosexual groups aroused Baptist rancor, although the company has said it had nothing to do with the gay events.

''When you got 1.6 million Southern Baptists in Florida in close juxtaposition to 80,000 gay and lesbian people at the theme park, you got an explosion,'' Mr. Land said.

Mr. Land and his committee recommended a narrower boycott as easier to explain and enforce. To inform delegates about all they should boycott, the convention handed out a list with more than 100 properties, including the Walt Disney and Miramax studios, the ESPN and Discover cable networks and dozens of trade journals.

Several delegates who favored the broader measure said it might be symbolic most of all.

''Will a Southern Baptist boycott change the Disney company?'' Lisa Kinney of Largo, Fla., asked the convention. ''I don't know. But it will change us. It will affirm to us and the world that we love Jesus more than we love our entertainments.''

Although the convention's vote was so overwhelming that no count was taken, dissenters included Jim Henry, the convention's immediate past president and the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Orlando, Fla. In Disney World's home, his church has hundreds of Disney employees as members.

''If you're the people who are going to boycott us, don't talk to me about coming to church,'' Mr. Henry recalled some of his members as saying.

Gay rights groups said the boycott was out of touch with most Christians, who favor toleration, and might even backfire.

''What we're challenging is their use of economic power to bully a company into discriminating,'' said David M. Smith, senior strategist for the Human Rights Campaign, a gay political group. ''This would be a good time to go to Disney World or Disneyland if you're planning a vacation.''

The boycott plans appeared to at most nick Disney's stock, which fell 1 1/2 points to 82 1/2 today as the broader market also dropped.

Tom Wolzien, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, called Disney an easy target but added that a boycott was unlikely to succeed. Mr. Wolzien said he had organized focus groups in which religious conservatives said they resented some Disney subjects.

''But on the other hand,'' he added, ''they were having a heck of a time telling their kids they couldn't take the trip to Disney World.''

Photo: Delegates at the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas voted yesterday for a resolution to boycott all parts of the Walt Disney Company. (Thomas E. McCarver/Herald-Tribune, Spartanburg, S.C.)